She was pleading with Hanaud not to press his question, and Mr. Ricardo was actually moved to a reluctant sympathy with her. She was detestable. She had a narrow aggressive vanity. She had a social perspective which was ridiculous, but she was upright. She had a code of honour and was being desperately tempted to drive a coach and horses through it.
“This Major Scott Carruthers” — she made a dreadful bungle of the name— “Papa was curiously impressed by him. His face and appearance, they had no significance. But he was a person precise and masterful. One had confidence in him. One respected the confidence he made to one. I don’t think Papa would be pleased if I betrayed it.”
It seemed to Ricardo that his unfortunate friend Hanaud was going to be defeated by the simple honesty of a tradesmen’s rubric. But the Inspecteur Principal had a card up his sleeve, and he now proceeded to play it.
“Madame, I shall make it very easy for you to tell me about this commission of Major Scott Carruthers.”
“I hope so, monsieur.”
“For I shall show you that your duty to Monsieur Tabateau compels you.”
“I am listening, monsieur.”
“The young Rajah to whom this rope of pearls was entrusted by his father knew nothing whatever of Major Scott Carruthers’s visit to Monsieur Tabateau.”
Madame de Viard stared at Hanaud with incredulity. “What is it that you are saying?” she asked.
“Nor does he know of it to this day. Consider, madame. I have seen the Prince to-day. He is in the greatest distress. This sacred jewel is stolen. He told me all that he knew to help me to recover it. But he told me nothing of any visit of his secretary to Monsieur Tabateau. He does not know that Monsieur Tabateau ever had those pearls in his safe. Should I be asking you these questions if he had known?”
“That is true. You would not,” she answered slowly. “Then Papa was mistaken about this man?”
“Madame, whatever object Major Scott Carruthers had in taking this jewel to your father, it was an object of his own. Nahendra Nao neither consented to it nor knew of it. That, believe me, is the truth.”
Hanaud spoke with a quiet energy which carried conviction. Madame de Viard was now thoroughly disturbed. She was not thinking of orders or ribbons any more. Some attempt had been made to misuse and trick the great firm of Tabateau. She was scandalised. She was shocked.
“It was then a dirty business!” she cried.
“I don’t yet know,” replied Hanaud.
“You shall judge for yourself,” said Madame de Viard. “The Major brought that great chaplet so that an exact copy of it should be made.”
“Oh.”
Hanaud rose from his chair with a spring, upsetting the diary off his knees on to the floor. He plunged his hands into his pockets, and gazed at the woman in front of him with a face of perplexity.
“So that was it!”
“The copy, monsieur, was to be exact; the pearls of the exact weight, the exact colour, even the string was to be exactly matched. It must be so perfect a copy that an expert would be deceived. And it must be done at once.”
“Yes, yes,” Hanaud interposed. “At once, of course. Lest His Highness should ask for it, and find out that his secretary had taken it to Tabateau. We see that, don’t we? But he gave a reason, I suppose — this Major Carruthers?”
“Certainly, monsieur, and the most natural reason — His Highness was afraid that so precious a thing might attract the thieves.”
Suddenly Hanaud laughed harshly.
“A witty fellow, the Major. Yes, yes, it might attract the thieves. Perhaps it had attracted one of them. Continue, madame! I beg your pardon.”
“His Highness, therefore, as soon as the copy was made, would lock away the genuine article in the bank, and only bring it out for the great ceremonies. For the minor affairs the copy would do.”
“Nothing could be more plausible,” Hanaud agreed. He picked up the diary from the floor and handed it to her with a bow.
“Madame, I kiss your hands. I thank you from my heart for the information you have given me. It is most valuable, and we shall keep it — shall we not? — entirely to ourselves as long as we can.”
“And you will not forget to recall my name to the Prince?” she asked anxiously.
“When I explain to him the service you have rendered, it will be impossible for him to forget it. Do not ring for your servant, madame. We will find our way to the door.”
“Good morning, Monsieur Parcolet.”
Madame de Viard was all smiles for him. Mr. Ricardo followed Parcolet from the room into the passage. He bowed to Madame de Viard without looking at her. But in the passage he turned to close the door. Madame de Viard’s kind thoughts did not apparently include Mr. Ricardo. She was regarding him with a grin of triumphant derision. Why this particular comparison rose into his mind he never could explain. But he thought of a Chinese executioner advancing with delight to administer the first of the Thousand Cuts.
“Beads!” she hissed at him, and he fled down the passage in a hurry to rejoin his companions.
CHAPTER XVI
THE COMPLETE SLOPS
THE THREE MEN crossed the road into the grove of trees and sat down upon a bench above the river.
“So! We have some moments and we smoke,” said Hanaud. He took his blue packet from his pocket and extended it to Parcolet the Commissary. Parcolet took one, Hanaud took another, and they lighted them with the briquet.
“Monsieur does not smoke?” Parcolet asked politely of Ricardo.
“Yes, but only the ‘Avana,” answered Hanaud, and with a beaming smile he drove his elbow into Ricardo’s ribs. Ricardo smiled acidly.
“We have now a college in England, where the police learn good manners,” he said, “and I hope that a similar institution will be established in France, and that you, my dear Hanaud, will be the first pupil.”
“Aha! He puts me in the place. But I am an impermeable. The sarcasm!” And he blew a ring of smoke to show what he thought of it. He was certainly in an excellent temper with himself.
“The point of departure — Madame de Viard — well chosen, oh? No complaints? No. The little ticket with ‘Mon Dieu!’ upon it from the revolving globe, a prize. So! Let us see how far we have got.”
He sat still for a moment or two, and then spoke his summary. “The excellent Major, that quiet and forceful man, has a copy of Nahendra Nao’s sacred jewel made in January, without Nahendra Nao’s knowledge. But a little while afterwards Nahendra Nao lends his jewel to Elsie Marsh, who is envious to wear it, and by the end of March, the pearls are sick. Then the copy is no good. It is a copy made when the original was unblemished. It cannot now be substituted at the convenient moment, no. The pearls must be healed first, if that can be done. It can be done. It is done — thanks to the forcefulness of the excellent Major, and some admirable quality in the blood of the charming Miss Lydia Flight. Good! So there we are at the end of July, the scene all set — eh? A robbery at the ball in the house of a Mr. Stallard from Arizona has so conveniently taken, and the substitution of the copy for the original. That is right!”
He looked first into one, and then into the other, of two utterly astonished faces.
“Agreed,” he said cheerfully. “It is not right — it is wrong. It is all wrong. In a phrase, it is the complete slops.”
“You mean, I think,” Ricardo corrected gently, “a complete flop.”
“No, no,” Hanaud replied, and he turned to the black-bearded Commissary, who was looking a little puzzled. “You must not mind, my dear Commissaire. It is my habit to intergrease my remarks with the homely idioms of England.” A twitch of pain, as though the nerve of a tooth had stabbed Mr. Ricardo in the cheek, was the only comment which the poor man made upon that abomination of a word, “intergrease.”
“I too am spikking the English by day by night,” said Parcolet the Commissaire, making more or less use of that tongue.
“Well, then,” Hanaud resumed, “it is all wrong. It
is the complete slops. For the copy was not substituted. The moment comes, the great rope is stolen, and instead of the excellent Major saying: ‘Stolen! What farce! Here it is all the time!’ and producing the copy — no! Everyone begins to telegraph and to telephone to Nahendra Nao: ‘It is gone!’ And mark you, the excellent Major was not at the ball, he was at Trouville, waiting for his Rajah. It is a difficulty.”
Parcolet the Commissaire nodded his head profoundly. He was a deep thinker. Yes, yes, one must be aware of it.
“It is certainly a difficulty,” he agreed.
“For, look you” — (“Oh, he’s being Welsh now,” Mr. Ricardo groaned)— “either the excellent Major told the truth to Tabateau, he wanted the copy for safety and — an idiom again — I have them — he leads the Great Bear honestly...”
“No, no,” exclaimed Ricardo. He was not bothering about the idioms. He must keep Hanaud on the proper rails. “He does not lead the Great Bear honestly. If he did, he would have told Nahendra Nao of the copy which Tabateau was making.”
“Yes, that is true,” Hanaud agreed. “He would have told Nahendra Nao. He would have said: ‘Gor-blimey, Highness...”
“I think it is extremely likely,” replied Ricardo sarcastically.
“I learned the exclamation once from your excellent chauffeur, my friend,” Hanaud rejoined mildly. “He would have said ‘I am having a copy made by Tabateau and you can lend that to the young Lady of the Casino de Paris.’ But he did not.”
“No, he did not,” said Ricardo. And then an idea blazed across his mind, like a comet across the sky. “Wait! Listen! What if it was the copy which was stolen, and the Major keeps the original.”
Parcolet the Commissaire said here in effect was an idea. Hanaud, on the other hand, would have none of it.
“I anchor my sheets to Madame de Viard,” he cried, and Mr. Ricardo murmured:
“Redoubtable man!”
“If Lydia Flight had been wearing the copy that night, there would have been no startled ‘Mon Dieu!’ from that lady. She knew. Lydia Flight wore that rope of pearls. Let us have no bad bones about that!”
“No, and no broken blood either. I agree,” Ricardo acknowledged.
“Very well, then,” continued Hanaud. “We must accept that the excellent Major is subtle as well as masterful. He has something in the sleeve — yes, the ace of strumpets.”
“And he means to play it bye-bye,” concluded Parcolet the Commissaire.
“We must watch this Major, so masterful and perhaps so subtle,” said Hanaud.
“We shall watch him on the links,” Parcolet agreed. But this was more than Mr. Ricardo could endure.
“Like a lynx,” he said to Parcolet. “Meanwhile may I merely suggest that Miss Lydia Flight is by arrangement waiting in my sitting-room to tell you what happened to her at Mr. Stallard’s ball. And if you’ll take my advice, you’ll do a little lynx-work on Mr. Stallard from Arizona too.”
“Ha, ha!” cried Hanaud. As he rose from the bench, he looked at Ricardo with appreciation. “We pay attention, Parcolet and I. I have him in my book, here,” and he thumped his chest. “The man from Arizona. A comic opera, what? But also a riddle. You know him?”
“All I know,” Ricardo answered, “is that I made him extremely uncomfortable one afternoon by insisting that I had seen him, or someone closely resembling him, before.”
But what neither Mr. Ricardo, nor Hanaud, nor Parcolet the Commissaire, knew at this time was that Guy Stallard had only to go out into an open space and extend his arms, and from every quarter birds would come, settle upon his hands and his shoulders, and climb over his coat, and hop about his feet, and treat him as a friend who has been too long away.
CHAPTER XVII
FOOTPRINTS IN THE CORRIDOR
LYDIA FLIGHT WAS not waiting in Mr. Ricardo’s sitting-room when the three men returned to the hotel. Enquiries were made. She was not in the hotel. She had not called at the hotel. No girl in a small purple car had stopped for a moment anywhere near the hotel. Hanaud shook his head and pursed up his lips.
“This does not look well,” he said.
“I cannot say that it does,” Parcolet the Commissaire remarked sagely.
“And we have great need that she should tell us what happened to her when she went upstairs after the bottle of champagne was upset.”
“We may get the story from Scott Carruthers at the House of the Pebble,” Ricardo suggested.
“We shall get a story without a doubt,” Hanaud rejoined. “But will it be true?”
At that moment there came a knock at the door.
“Aha!” said Ricardo, “It is she!” He ran to the door and opened it. On the threshold stood a gendarme in uniform.
“It is the Brigadier Durasoy,” said Parcolet.
“He has news of the car, then,” said Hanaud. “Come in, Brigadier, and shut the door behind you.”
He explained to Ricardo.
“When I called upon Monsieur the Commissaire, whilst you were arranging for our rooms, I asked him to get me news of that yellow car which you saw dash from the gates of the Château. And if I may judge from the importance of the Brigadier Durasoy, he has information.”
Durasoy stepped forward, he gave a neat flick to his tawny moustache, he took a little note-book from his pocket, he stood at attention, and read:
“The car with the registration number G.F.432 was garaged at the depot of Savelle opposite to the landing place of the ferry. It had the G.B. plate and was owned by a Monsieur Oliver Ransom of the house-boat Marie-Popette...”
“Your yellow car,” Hanaud interrupted with a wave of the hand to Ricardo.
“It was noticed first of all at three o’clock on the morning of Friday at the side of Rouen railway station. It had not been there at two. It was empty, and the lights were out. The gendarme who had noticed it kept watch upon it for an hour. No one approached it. At four he examined it. He found in the pocket of the door the Customs’ carnet and the driving permit, made out to Oliver Ransom. He telephoned to the police station and the car was removed to the police garage. No one has asked for it.”
Hanaud’s face had grown grave and troubled whilst the story was being told. He looked at Ricardo.
“And this does not look well, my friend,” he said gently.
It certainly did not look well at all. Ricardo had kept a keen if silent sympathy with the young couple. But the discovery of the car abandoned outside the railway station in the early morning, and the failure of Lydia Flight to keep her appointment with Hanaud, were unpleasant shocks. Were those two in a conspiracy with the excellent Major? Had they anticipated the excellent Major, beaten him to it, as the saying goes? — and Heaven forfend that Hanaud should ever hear of that saying. Mr. Ricardo’s emotions were in a whirl.
“We must go at once to the Château du Caillou,” he cried. “It is imperative. My launch waits by the hard.”
Hanaud, Parcolet and the Brigadier and Mr. Ricardo went on board. The sun was still high and the sky colourless, as though the sun had bleached it. But a light breeze was blowing up the river and the four passengers turned their faces to it gratefully. Beyond the bend the vast forest of Brotonne rose in a dark unbroken sweep. At its foot, above the river, the road wound like a ribbon and the fringe of the forest was here and there broken by a cottage or a field or a haycock. A tiny cape thrust its tongue into the water and the big brown pebble lifted out of the canopy of foliage, and suddenly the house itself glowed red like a jewel against its thick curtain of trees.
“One thing,” said Hanaud, as the launch slowed down. “I make the mistakes, but shall we keep the corrections till afterwards? Yes, I think so. We watch with all our eyes, and we listen with both our ears, and when that inefficient one Hanaud puts the large foot in it, we do the criticisms in our memories.”
“That is the way things are done,” said Parcolet wisely. Mr. Ricardo blushed and hurriedly agreed. The Brigadier saluted. And the launch sidled up to the pier. The iron gat
e of the pier stood open, as did those high gates of the courtyard. No one was about, not even the little garage assistant, Nick Furlong. The butler — it was the same man whom Ricardo remembered — conducted the party through the lounge on to the terrace. He had not asked for any names, and he did not give any.
“These gentlemen,” he said, and Guy Stallard and Major Scott Carruthers rose from their chairs. They had been sitting with a whisky and soda each in front of them, at a round iron table. Guy Stallard was ease itself.
“Mr. Ricardo, of course, I know,” he said. “You too, sir, I know very well by sight, the Commissaire of Caudebec. Then you will be Monsieur Hanaud of the Sûreté Generale. You will be seated? You will drink something?”
Hanaud refused the drink, but took the seat.
“And this, I suppose,” he said, looking from Guy Stallard to his companion, “is Major Scott Carruthers?”
“Yes,” said Stallard, and Scott Carruthers nodded his head. He was dressed in a suit of grey flannel, a negative, retiring man who did not seem at all to accord with the picture which Madame de Viard had drawn of him.
“I understand that you have come here at the request of the young Rajah of Chitipur,” Guy Stallard resumed, “and I put myself and my house and my servants at your disposal. That a theft should have taken place under my eyes, as it were, is very galling to me, and whatever I can do to free my guests from suspicion, I certainly shall.”
“That is charming of you,” said Hanaud, with a bow of acknowledgement. “We know that when the signal was given outside the windows of the supper-room that the entertainment was going to begin, Miss Lydia Flight was wearing, hidden in the folds of her cravat, this precious necklace of the young Rajah.”
“She was wearing it then? You are quite sure?” cried Major Scott Carruthers in rather a shrill voice.
“Absolutely sure,” Hanaud answered calmly. “So we are only interested in what happened after that time.”
“I quite understand,” said Stallard with a smile. “You would like, for instance, to know my movements?”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 133